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After the final entries have been submitted, voting begins. Each person may vote for up to two entries. There will also be no comments involving attempts to coax the votes in somebody's favour, as making such comments will remove your votes or (should it be an entrant who does so) entry from the competition. We want this to stay fair for everybody.

When voting, please write down the username of the entrants and the title of their entry, like so:

Mark Twain - The Innocents Abroad

Like the entry phase, all votes must be posted before 11:59:59 PM PST of September 29. Any voting after that will be void.

Spoiler for lordshadowisle - Writer's Block is for Perverts:

Writer's Block is for Perverts

Oh stop. Stop thinking that with your impure mind. It is disgusting. And you wonder why you don’t have a significant other. Look at what you’re doing.

I'm here by authority of the universal arbiters of style, sense, and purity. Almost divine, really. I’m here to stop you. Here’s what would happen if I don’t: you'll continue your random deviations, decide that it’s a good idea to share, then start writing, and click POST. But here are the facts: Not everyone enjoys what you are putting to ink. In fact, nobody likes reading about the sexual adventures of other unattractive people. It is a style-crime! So I have to stop you, even if I have to excise every single impure thought from the recesses of your mind before it gets transmitted.

Ah, him! Of course you’re not capable of writing like him, don’t even try. Your work is NOT high literature; you just feel high writing it. But here’s a secret- that guy you compared yourself to? It was a job I did a long way back, but he had a particularly filthy brain. Imagine all the horrendous pairings possible between appendage and orifice, and double that. And he far surpassed that stage very early on, though in hindsight that’s what you expect from someone with his name at least- to vibrate some spear! And he would have put down all that obscenity to ink, had I not stopped him! It wasn’t easy trying to blank out his perverse cognitions; apparently he was particularly productive in manner of thought. It turned out well for him in the end, though; he had a sufficient few clean ideas left over to gain some small fame in literary circles thereafter.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to think about sex. It’s not unnatural. What the High One feels is the problem is universal reading and writing. Ok, that’s not wrong in itself too. But combine the two and wham! Bad idea. If I didn’t do anything, your bookstores would be full of porn. Your internet would be a vast, interconnected network containing nothing but bawdy material. Oh well it already is, but those are multimedia, not ye-old-media. I can’t do everything.

That’s not counted. It’s not! Books containing homoerotic visual depictions of males with a smattering of text? That’s just DRAWINGS with text. DRAWINGS. Art counts under a different scheme, even if it’s drawn by a cabal of rotten girls with eccentric tastes. How do you expect me to edit, anyway? I can wipe words and paragraphs, but how do I blank out a drawing? Stroke by stroke?

Oh that’s what you say. Self-control, you say. I’ve seen you, I’ve seen how you act. When you think nobody’s looking you hold down Crtl-Shift-P and do things. You think you’ve got it under control, but your mind will wander and focus on exactly the wrong things to write. There’s no other way about it. I’ll rather be safe than sorry. Better to remove every possible seed of mischief than to take the risk. Too bad if you feel a bit dim at the end of the day, though. It must be terrible to suddenly grasp a sense of the muse, and yet be utterly unable to write when you finally reach the nearest writing implement.

Well, you won’t remember. It’s not the first time we had this conversation anyway. You’ll only feel a sudden blan-

Spoiler for felix - Black Rose:

Knightmare
Act II - Night Eternal

Black Rose

Lilet runs though the forest filled with the beasts. Slowly the beast howls get ever sharper, ever louder. The old man recovering asks Lilet where they were heading to, but she doesn’t reply, he then asks again but again she doesn’t reply. As they move forward the snow storm starts to get thiner and thiner as they approach a dry river bank, and just as soon as they start to feel relieved as the howls cease, they soon see the face of dread when they find out why they've ceased. On the other side of the frozen river on steep bank a whole pack of beasts lay poised to jump down, while the others slowly moved in from the rear crunching their teeth and drawing breath. The situation was hopeless, completely hopeless or so the old man mumbled bitting his tongue. Lilet gave him a short look but all he was doing was writing his last words in his journal, though more precisely his last word, as his pen and sanity fail him. She pays him no heed and just looks around, ganging the distance between her pursuers and ambushers and the layout of the terrain. Nothing much to look at, the water bed is a huge expand of frozen sand and logs on one side and rocks and slippery ice on the other.

A single grizzly howl can be heard from a distance, no doubt in Lilet's mind what that means. She looks at the man again grabs his journal and throws it away and gives him a big slap. He doesn't budge much, doesn't say a word either, in the moment, just looks back into her eyes.

“five minutes” said Lilet
“W-What?...” said the old man shivering
“you can probably survive for five minutes”
“I'll bet your life on that” said Lilet grabbing a giant log from the icy sand
“Y-You... want to fight. W-We’ll die.” said the old man looking around him, at the red eyes glaring

With log in one hand she grabs his hand and charges towards the front, towards the beasts on the high river bank. She aprouches with haste and breaks the ice with the heavy log. The rear beasts immediately charge but the ones at the cliff keep their ground and only howl down. She flings the old man into the air and crushes the remainder of the ice with a heavy stomp, breaking it completely and going under, into the freezing river.

A heavy horned beasts approaches. A lot of beasts growl at hole, but nothing is under. Not a moment passes and soon, lead by the alpha, all of them move swiftly to chase down river. The ice shakes as their claws dig into it, and a bits of ice flay everywhere. Even the fish bellow can feel their stampede, but barely can outrun it. Not much time passes and they reach a waterfall, bellow which the stream splits into small streams and disappears. And so they wait, and wait, but nothing drops, not even a corpse...

Several hours pass and the old man regains consciousness. He feels how he is tied to a pole. He can't see very well but in his ear he can hear dark evil whispers and bellow him he can feel heat, burning, ever stronger. He can feel it, soon his skin will peal off. He tries to cry for help but he has no strenth in his voice and barely a breath comes out. His vision starts to come back to him, but his eyes won't open fully. Before him he sees shapes, non human shapes, and as fear beckons strength he tries even harder to scream for help. Soon words start come off his tongue but relief is short lived as he soon find himself falling towards the ground and fire. He screams in terror...

“you done screaming” said Lilet pocking the old man with a stick
“Y-You! what are you doing?!” mumbles the old man
“curing your hypothermia” said Lilet staring at him
“W-What?” said the old man
“you also forgot to breath, soon after we got into the water”
“Water... W-Water” said the man recalling what happens
“I can't swim!!” he screams
“obviously you can't breath or think either” said Lilet as she throws him a fried fowl looking thing in his face
“eat”

Lilet unties him from the pole. The man is too battered to take Lilet's words in, and just gets the piece of food and starts chewing. He finishes half of it quite quickly, and soon starts to feel a bit more normal; his strength finally coming back to him.

“We'll need to move miss... because of the fire the beasts will find us soon.” said the old man
“it's still snowing” said Lilet pointing outside at the blizzard
“Um... T-Thanks for, um saving me...” mumbles the old man
“...from the cold.”
“To even go as far as to light a fire... I'm grateful.” said the old man with a shine in his eye
“the fire... it was the only way” said Lilet
“Pardon... miss.” said the old man
“my father, he thought me body heat is the quickest” said Lilet walking towards the man
“...but, after that plunge and running upstream, I doubt it would have worked” as Lilet put her hands on the old mans cheek he could feel a chill as cold as the winter wind

A little bit shaken, the old coat tries to find some opportunity for conversation to change the mood, and easy his disbelief.

“Uhm... Uh... the shelter is pretty... well made.” said the old man looking at the stacks of cut branches circling them.
“H-How did you manage?”
“evil funny looking sword thing” said Lilet manifesting the Reaper's medium and slamming it into the ground
“Ah- I see, y-yes... of course.” said the man chewing some more on the fried bird
“E-Excellent catch... by the way, very... tasty.” said the man again trying to change the subject again
“evil funny looking sword thing” said Lilet with a smirk on her face
“Cough ...BUT, none of this would have been possible with out your excellent fire starting skills.” sais the man chocking on the food
“w-well...” said Lilet
“evil funny looking sword thing...”
“...with funny looking fire!” and the swords catches fire

Bits of food fall out of the mans mouth as his jaw drops in disbelief.

Meanwhile on the opposite side of the mountains, in town, Winter and December approach Julia, the client. She's hesitant at first to even pay attention to them, but as soon as Winter takes the horn out and jumps in front of her she pulls the both of them into a nearby alley and slams them to the wall.

“Boy. How did you come in possession of this? Who sent you!” said Julia
“Nobody. I-It's mine, I gr- found it!” said Winter
“I-I-I...”
“Speak up brat!” screams Julia
“dem- pay.. ment..” mumbles Winter
“Payment? What payment?” said Julia
“The... mercenary payment.” said Winter hiding his face
“My business with the mercenaries...” said Julia turning slowly the other way
“...is MY business with the MERCENARIES.”
“Which makes it none of YOUR business.”
“B-But... the horn... I have the horn.” said Winter, crumbling at the scene
“Ah yes, the horn... the horn...” said Julia (still) holding it
“Tell me, what of the mercenaries I sent?” she asks tacking out a inscription tool
“T-They... uhm... ain’t commming back!” said Winter; a deep silence follows
“I... see. Maybe we can work something out then.” said Julia
“I want to join the arena! to join the fight.” said Winter, ecstatic
“Yeah. Sure.” replies Julia with a smirk on her face and the horn decorated
“Winter... this is bad, don't go. We should just go back to September and January.” whispers December
“Winter... hey, Winter...” but Winter doesn't listen, his mind is already full of the glory of the arena
“Hey, other kid.” said Julia
“You're coming too.”
“But... I-I'm against v-violence.” said December cowering to the ground
“Don't worry. You won't have to lift a finger sugar. I just need you to be there.” said Julia squeezing the decorated horn

Spoiler for papermario13689 - The Class, The Teacher:

The Class, The Teacher

A class of exactly 30 students. In the very back corner I always sit, and I keep to myself; it's a really nice class except for one little thing, the teacher.

"HEY!" he shouts. Even my mind begins to sweat as he opens his big, bulgy eyes and scans the room. This ain't gonna be pretty, I tell ya.

There must have been a plague going around our class today, I swear. Teacher hands us all a timed quiz involving writing our own short stories and everyone freaks out and gets writer's block. Teacher doesn't like it when we can't be creative you see- we always say he was built that way.

Four minutes in, can't think of anything. It doesn't help that teacher seems to be getting less and less patient with the class. Nobody seems to be able to move their pencils, after all! I don't know about you, but when a teacher's staring directly at you during a quiz, it's very difficult to come up with anything. We all know the punishment for not turning anything in, and we didn't want that. You don't even understand, we DEFINITELY didn't want THAT.

I spotted Jonathan begin to move his pencil back and forth in a writing motion, but I knew he wasn't actually writing. That trick isn't gonna fool teacher, Jon. The kid was doomed, there was nothing left for him here. Something in teacher's possession began to beep loudly as his eyes fixated on Jonathan and the random scribbles on his page. You could see Jon's sweat all the way from New Zealand, I swear.

"S...sorry, teacher!" he screamed, but it was way too late. Teacher's hand whirred loudly and moments later a tiny rocket had coursed its way from his hand to Jon's stomach. BIG BOOM. I could see Cindy in the seat directly behind Jon's covered in gunpowder and crazy amounts of blood. I guess I don't have to say that she was screaming loudly, do I?

In the other side of the front row, Takane couldn't stop laughing. "Aw man, that was priceless! Jon actually thought THAT would fool the teacher?! Look what happened, you stupid bugger!"

Bad, BAD idea, Takane. Hopefully you've written your last will and everything. I could already see teacher's red laser scan his general area. Teacher's long arms stretched out and grasped Takane by his chest. Still laughing, he was quickly suplexed out the third story classroom window at lightning fast speeds. Needless to say, he wasn't going to finish the quiz.

Now, what happens next was really weird. Okay, so things were already weird as hell, but in my situation is was quite strange. Will took a glance at Takane mid-flight, and hardcore facepalmed. Teacher goes berserk and starts flailing his arms around everywhere. Tables fly, sharp objects rocket around, and all I can hear is loud alarms going off from teacher's direction. I quickly get up, and while dodging tables and missile pencils, begin writing this story. Who knows? If I get blown into a million pieces or bazooka'd out of a window, it'd make a good last note. Y'know, given it doesn't disintegrate in all this madness.

There! Write down my name and date- can NEVER, EVER forget that. I cautiously make my way to the berserk-mode teacher and feed the finished quiz into his chest plate. Immediately the insanity comes to a halt and teacher's head lights up green and dings. The quiz comes back out with a few engraved marking on it reading: "A-minus. Decent plot but felt a little rushed, beware of run-on sentences."

You're welcome to even write a 10 word sentence if you feel that makes a strong statement about the theme. If you can find anything to post, that'd be a really nice addition to the already nice lineup, if you wanted.:P

Nobody said these have to be top-notch submissions, so whatever you can contribute would always be appreciated, of course

And yeah, looks like lordshadowisle sweeps this month's contest, congrats Perhaps you should celebrate by thinking up the next theme?

Unknown writers?
Your entry was good, I don't think it was an undeserving win. Of course, as long as people actually care about what they submit I don't think anything counts as an undeserving victory.

The most 'valuable' brains are the most unused ones! For this month's theme, include the concept of idiocy, stupidity, foolishness, brainlessness, or just general incompetence. Or, if you can pull it off, try to do it to the reader!

The most 'valuable' brains are the most unused ones! For this month's theme, include the concept of idiocy, stupidity, foolishness, brainlessness, or just general incompetence. Or, if you can pull it off, try to do it to the reader!

The most 'valuable' brains are the most unused ones! For this month's theme, include the concept of idiocy, stupidity, foolishness, brainlessness, or just general incompetence. Or, if you can pull it off, try to do it to the reader!